and I've never asked for you to bleed yourself dry in our names
by The Crownless Queen
Summary: When she finds out that Marinette is Ladybug, Alya really feels like hating her friend. She can't, though. She never could. Part 1 of the Alya knows series.


**and I've never asked for you to bleed yourself dry in our names**

It's not like Alya ever actually expected to ever discover Ladybug's secret identity. For all that she'd like to know and pretends to look for it with the wildest theories – and yes, alright, she can admit that thinking Chloe was the heroine was probably _too_ far-fetched – she actually understands how important it is that it remains, you know, a secret.

After all, she's had first-hand experience in how determined to destroy Ladybug and Chat Noir all those akumas villains are – both from half-remembered impressions from her own times as an evil monster, and from her videos of Ladybug's fights, videos that she only managed to take by venturing closer than advisable to them in the first place (but what wouldn't she do to show the people of Paris just what their heroes faced for them?).

So yes, she wants to know, if only to be able to actually thank the person behind the mask for all that she's doing, and giving up too, because Alya can't imagine anyone managing both a life and superheroics.

But she also doesn't, sometimes, when she doesn't let her curiosity and enthusiasm got away from her, because she wouldn't know what to do with that knowledge. Could she tell anyone – and the citizens of Paris do deserve to know who Ladybug is, Alya's sure of it – when that might also mean that she's endangering her hero's family and friends? Should she?

Those are questions that keep her up at night, twisting nerves in her stomach until she almost feels sick from it.

 _(she wishes someone could tell her what to do)_

So she looks and looks, and every time nothing comes out of it she acts disappointed, and part of her is, of course, but part of her is also so relieved that today isn't the day she'll have to make that terrible choice.

Unfortunately, that only lasts so long.

Because yes, eventually Alya does find out Ladybug's secret identity.

 _(and let me tell you, that one's a shocker)_

 **.x.**

Honestly, it happens by accident.

For all the scenarios in which Alya imagined finding out Ladybug's secret identity – a public unveiling, her staying too long after a fight and running out of time, or Alya's camera catching the right moment of the transformation – she never considered this.

Because it starts with something familiar that bugs her, an 'I know this' that always flashes at the forefront of her mind every time she sees Ladybug jump in front of danger, the line of her shoulders reading righteous determination and something else, something she hasn't yet managed to identify but that still somehow resonates with her.

And maybe that's why, when a new evil appears – some author whose stories weren't published who can know rewrite the world as he sees fit – she follows Marinette when her friend tries to slip away when they get attacked in the middle of the street.

Alya barely has a second to be grateful that for once this isn't happening at school – they do have exams at the end of the year, and she'd like to have had enough lessons to pass them, thank you very much – before the ground in front of her turns into a wide chasm, and is that lava running at the bottom of it?

Marinette grabs her hand and they run, until they come to a relatively safe place where they can hide. Or, well, at least somewhere where they can catch their breaths.

That place just turns out to be the subway station they were the closest to.

"Stay here, I'll go see if it's safe to leave,'" Marinette starts, and no, okay, that is not happening.

Alya isn't letting her best friend go out in a war zone alone if she can help it. "You're not leaving me behind this time, Marinette. We're in this together. Besides," she adds when something screeches loudly outside, "I'm pretty sure our exit's compromised for now."

It's only there for a moment, but Marinette's expression when she hears answering screams to that noise – human screams – bears a determination she has seen before.

She barely hears Marinette's next arguments, something about not being able to stay there, and how Alya should look for another way to leave on the platform while Marinette goes looking for a clear exit, because in that moment she knows.

 _(it's a terrible thing, knowing)_

Marinette leaves, and though she is still to stunned to know anything other than that she must have agreed to Marinette's plan, Alya follows her.

She has to be sure, because if she's right… If she's right, then everything's about to change.

It doesn't even take long. She sees the light before she sees anything else, and ducks behind some stairs just as the costume of her favorite heroine covers the body of her best friend.

It's not a moment too soon either, because the moment Alya is truly out of sight from the corridor she's just witness Marinette entering is the moment Ladybug exits it.

The red and black clad girl passes right in front of Alya without seeing her, and it's only once she's long gone that she remembers how to breathe.

She feels like laughing, like screaming, like crying, because how could she not have seen this coming? How could she not have known before?

What kind of best friend is she, that she didn't even notice that Marinette was keeping such a secret from her?

She allows herself five minutes to panic, and then she clamps down on her feelings – she'll deal with those later, preferably with ice-cream and chocolate – and grabs her phone.

Someone has to report Ladybug's latest heroics, and it might as well be her.

 _(be safe Marinette, her heart begs, where it once would have beaten only in excitement)_

 **.x.**

Once all the fighting is done and the town is back to normal, Alya sends a quick message to Marinette to tell her that she's fine and has gone back home.

She buries her head in her pillow and ignores the call from her friend that comes next, but she feels like she's entitled to some sulking.

She feels like cursing the other girl – what is she supposed to do now? She can't very well betray her friend by telling anyone that she knows Ladybug's secret identity, and if Marinette didn't tell her, well, that must be because she has her reasons.

Good reasons, too (or so she hopes), because she and Marinette do not lie to each other. It's a promise that dates back years and to an incident they swore to never speak of again, but it still holds true to this day.

Well, Alya thought that it still did.

Another thing plagues her though.

Should she tell Marinette that she knows? She can already see how that conversation would go: 'Hi Marinette, so I know you're Ladybug'.

And then Marinette would trip over her own feet in shock as she tried to deny it, and probably break her neck, Paris would be without its heroine, and the world would end.

Okay, she might be exaggerating a little there. But only a little.

She just couldn't see that discussion ever going well. Maybe it would simply be better to wait for Marinette to come to her and tell her the truth?

Muffling another frustrated scream into her pillow, Alya kicks her bed covers.

This really isn't fair. She feels like hating her friend, even if just for a moment, but she can't.

She never could.

She doesn't sleep at all that night – at some point she finds the courage to upload her new videos to the ladyblog, but other than that, she mostly wallows on her bed.

When morning comes, she still can't believe that Marinette didn't tell her – she would have, she thinks, had she been the one chosen to become a hero, she would have shared it with her best friend – but she has forgiven her.

She's also decided that it would really be for the best to let Marinette tell her that secret herself. Hopefully, she won't have to keep that charade up for long.

 _(she's probably – definitely – underestimating her friend's stubbornness though)_

 **.x.**

Because of all the attacks on Paris, Alya's been used to going to class on just a few hours of sleep and still managing just fine. It's not even the first time she goes with no sleep at all, though those are definitely her least favorite days.

Everything feels slightly murky and slowed down, and some of her notes will be useless – she wrote twice on the same line in French class – but she'll manage. She always does.

Marinette's late, as usual these days, but now that Alya knows why she feels different about it. Before, she was always slightly exasperated with her friend, because surely it couldn't be that hard to be on time once in a while, but now she only feels compassion and pride.

And maybe it's not her place to be proud of her friend, but she is, because she's always thought that Marinette was extraordinary, and sure that used to be simply because of her creations, and now the whole world can see it too, even if they don't know (yet) who it is that they're seeing.

If Marinette suspects something when Alya greets her with a summary of what she's missed and a wider smile than usual, she doesn't say anything, and Alya breathes in relief.

Aside from the lack of sleep, the day goes by as every other day before ever went. She tries to get Marinette to ask Adrien out, doesn't laugh when her friend inevitably blurts out things she shouldn't in front of her crush, and exchanges knowing looks with Nino when Adrien lets out a somewhat embarrassed laugh as Marinette compliments his 'everything' for the third time in five minutes.

For a moment there, she almost believes things are back to normal.

That feeling even lasts for a while. She tones down on the Ladybug admiration a little at first, because it sort of feels awkward to extoll on the heroine's characteristics with Marinette just beside her, but somehow knowing just who she is makes her love her even more, so that doesn't last long.

It's even kind of fun actually, to watch her friend sweat whenever Alya announces that she has finally figured out Ladybug's secret. Harmless revenge in a way, because Alya may have forgiven her friend but she's not above making her suffer, a little, for letting her embarrass herself all this time with all of her theories on Ladybug.

So yes, it lasts a little, but just like everything else seems to be doing these days, it ends up crashing down.

 **.x.**

Alya catches a cold. It's nothing bad, but she's stuck at home for a few days, until she stops puking her guts every time she smells food.

Being sick is boring. Not only is there nothing that she can do, but even if there were she's too tired and feels too bad to do it.

She edits a few of her old videos on the ladyblog, makes photosets of Ladynoir, partly because she used to ship it, back before she knew that it was hopeless considering Marinette's crush on Adrien, and still sort of does (she can't help it, they just work so well together), partly because Marinette's reaction to those are always funny, and she'll take any highlight to her days when she feels as bad as she does.

Looking back on it actually, it's kind of amazing she didn't figure it all out before. Marinette is about as subtle as a brick about those things, and her panic every time someone mentions the word 'secret' in her vicinity keeps getting more and more obvious.

Anyway, there's been a bit of a lull in akuma activity in the last couple of weeks, and while Alya is glad that her life is free of that drama for the moment, it also means there are less opportunities to catch new shots of her heroes.

Though right now it's not necessarily a bad thing, seeing as she can't exactly go out filming when leaving her bed feels like running a marathon.

She's actually drifting off to sleep, since that's about the only thing that doesn't make her feel any worse, when she hears the screams.

It takes her barely two minutes to get in front of the TV and switch it on, the remote clutched tightly in her hand, but those two minutes feel like an eternity.

The fight is on every channel – except for that one which still shows a documentary on the reproduction of fish, which is kind of gross but not the point – but the footage is grainy and taken from afar. Nothing like the precision of hers, Alya notes with a hint of pride, and wraps herself tightly in her cover as she tries to pretend she's not deadly worried for her friend.

It was different the last time. She had known then too, the dangers that her friend was facing, but she had been too busy trying to stay safe herself while filming everything she could to really have the time to actually face the reality of those dangers.

But now she has nothing else to focus on, and the spotty footage isn't helping either. It's still good enough to see Ladybug and Chat Noir fighting against some sort of human-plant mutant.

The new villain is pelting them with what Alya assumes to be some kind of exploding seeds, and though she can't see if anyone has gotten hurt from those, the damage done to their surroundings is enough to tell Alya that she doesn't want her friend to get hit by one of those bomb-like things.

'She won't,' she tries to reassure herself. 'Ladybug can handle anything, she has faced worse odds before. She'll be _fine_.'

But Marinette's not indestructible, her treacherous mind whispers.

'Marinette _is_ Ladybug', she tells herself.

On screen, the view of the fight gets obscured by smoke as Ladybug uses her yo-yo to redirect the seeds aimed at her.

For half a second, Alya's heart stops. The world greys a little and she digs her fingernails into her palms until they bleed and waits for the image to clear with her heart in her throat (though that might also be the sickness).

When it finally does, the fight is over and Ladybug is setting free the no longer evil butterfly free as all the damage done is reversed.

That's always been her favorite part, even with as much as she loves seeing Ladybug kicking ass, but now it feels like it's even more so, because it means that her friend is safe again.

She somehow manages to wait until Ladybug leaves the scene to grab her phone and send a text to Marinette to ask her if she's alright.

The moments before her friend replies are some of the longest in her life, even when she knows, when she's seen, that Marinette's fine enough to walk away from the fight as she always does. She's having a lot of those lately.

She can't wait to be healed and back at her friend's side. Surely it will be better if can go back to witnessing most of the fights as they happen.

Anything has to be better than that hopeless feeling she got when the footage was cut earlier.

 _(spoiler: it really is)_

 **.x.**

Alya goes back to school the next week and Marinette greets her with all the school action she's missed – among other things, apparently Chloe tried to get their sport's teacher fired after he made her run laps like all the other students, which, according to her, ruined her hair – and her parents' homemade cookies.

It feels just like old times.

 _(and if by the middle of the day Marinette has to skip class to go save Paris again, well it's just a best friend's duty to cover for her)_


End file.
